Longest Night . . . EVER!

How come the Strike Team never gets a search warrant?

Last night was the first time in a long while I said to myself, "This job sucks." All the tell-tale signs of mayhem appeared as I walked into the squad room, and noticed that only four detectives were scheduled for the 4p x 12a tour. Swell. Four detectives on nightwork = four detectives playing catch up for the next week.

4:00pm - Things were going smoothly - I processed an arrest for a violation of a restraining order (that had nothing to do with RFTR and Kim Bauer) - when an off-duty officer walked in. This is never good news, because it means that cops are thinking for themselves. It wasn't a good idea when I was a cop, and it is not a good idea now. The off-duty said that she received a call on her cell phone from a business owner who had been burglarized earlier in the day. The owner looked at his security cameras and recognized the burglar as his security guard! Nice.

Allegedly, the guard came in during business hours and hid in the bathroom. The owner thought the guard left, but never checked the business before locking up and going home. Smart. The guard waited a little while, then went into the back room and took $20,000 cash out of an unlocked file drawer. Double smart! Before he did this, he had the sense enough to unplug the cameras. Or so he thought.

Unfortunately for Mr. Mensa, he unplugged only one camera. The other four were working fine. The cameras show him walking through the store after hours and counting something (most likely the money) before leaving out the back door. Thankfully for us detectives, the guard was wearing a bright red jacket and a white baseball cap with Asian writing encircling it. Not exactly a common ensemble.

7:00pm - The cop brings in the DVD, and we watch in amusement as Mr. Mensa commits three felonies right before our eyes. The words "dumbass" and "Einstein" are thrown about. I get assigned the case - which is basically a slam dunk - and we go to the store. While there, we get Mr. Mensa's boss to bring him around, and we slap the cuffs on him for the trip to the division. All the while, Mr. Mensa asks, "What did I do?"

8:00pm - Mr. Mensa is put into an interrogation room and we grill him. He is cooperative . . . until we tell we are looking at him for the burglary. Mr. Mensa goes into Eddie Murphy mode: "It wasn't me." We give him the description of the man on the DVD. "It wasn't me." We tell him that the owner identified him as the doer. "It wasn't me." It's now about 9pm. Half my day is shot, and this guy is getting on my last never. It was time to break out the DVD.

9:00pm - We sit him in front of the computer and show him entering, "shopping" for money, and leaving out the rear door. The face isn't perfectly clear, but good enough to prove that it was him. The kicker is the clothing. It's him. Mr. Mensa watches the DVD, turns around, and says, "It wasn't me."

This is the point where Vic Mackey would beat him senseless. We can't do that. Dang.

9:30pm - We tell Mr. Mensa to explain why he is on the camera. He says nothing. I ask him who is the man on the camera. He says it's someone else, because "lots of people wear that jacket and hat." (You have to see this hat. It's definitely one of a kind.) When we suggest that another man, looking just like him, wearing the same exact clothes as him, burglarized the store that he is very familiar with and has access to was the one who committed the burglary, he said, "Yeah." I tell Mr. Mensa that we're getting search warrants for his house and his car. He says, "Go ahead."

10:00pm - Okay. Interview over. Mr. Mensa is now officially arrested.

11pm - 12am - After two hours of figuring how many warrants we need and smoothing out all of the jurisdictional issues - Mr. Mensa's car is parked in the next county - I take the house warrant downtown for approval by a judge.

1:00am - Warrant approved. I gather up a sergeant and a detective to hit the house. It is in East Division, about a ten-minute drive. We hit the house - actually it's more like a bedroom and a kitchen - and tear it apart. Immediately we find the hat and the jacket, but there is no money or phone cards anywhere. Crap.

2:30am - We're enroute back to our division, and I tell the sergeant that this may have been a waste of time. He laughs and says, "Are you kidding? You never want an open and shut case. You can't make any money from court that way. A 'home run' usually means a plea. You want this to go to a jury. Either way, it's a guaranteed conviction." That's exactly what I needed to hear.

3:00am - We're back in the squad room, and I'm ready to put Mr. Mensa's arrest into the computer. And the computer system goes down. (Insert world's largest, loudest expletive here.) I am already looking at at least four hours o.t. on this job, plus the two hours o.t. I had for court before work. I wanna go home. The sergeant tells me to go home, but stop by my old district to do the paperwork.

4:00am - I finally process the paperwork for Mr. Mensa and wrap up any other loose ends. Although we didn't get a confession, and have yet to find the cash, there is more than enough evidence to convict this toad. The job is essentially cleared, and that's the ultimate goal. Now, I can go home.

5:15am - Mmm . . . bed!

(Sorry about the world's longest blog post, but if I didn't write about this, my head would have exploded. Now, I get two well-deserved days off, and I can finally watch 24 and The Shield.)